The Explosive Truth Behind the Legend of Mikey's Death by Pop Rocks and Coke John Gilchrist, the child actor best-known as Mikey from Life cereal's most notable commercial, was tossing around a baseball in 1979 when his mom got a bizarre phone call from a stranger in tears. "I'm so sorry to hear about your son!" the woman wailed. "What do you mean?" Gilchrist's mother shot back. "He's at the park -- he just came home from school." Probably just a wacko, his mom thought -- but "it weirded her out," recalls Gilchrist, now 49, "so she sent my oldest brother to drive by the field where I was playing to make sure I was OK. That’s when I first heard the Pop Rocks story."
